Toy Deathstar
Posted: 2003-06-23 01:21pm
Out of sheer boredom one day, I was thinking about this (I didn't have a calculator handy, but it should be pretty close anyway):
As a kid I often wanted to have a toy deathstar, but then I didn't really understand the scale of the thing.
Since according to the official literature it's 160 km in diameter, what if I wanted to scale it based on a 6 inch action figure?
6 inch equivalent to 6 foot man (12 in = 1 ft; 1/12)
160 km = 160,000 m = 480,000 ft = 90.90... miles
(1 mile = 5,280 ft)
91 miles / 12 = 7.58.. miles or 13.34 km (!!!!!)
So the toy death star would be almost 8 miles in diameter, 40,000 feet high, making it not only the largest toy ever constructed, but the greatest engineering feat ever accomplished by man, easily dwarfing the tallest buildings. Airplanes would have to fly around it, and climbing it would put a trip to Mt. Everest to shame (requiring oxygen tanks to even attempt to approach the summit). Gathering the materials alone would be a monumental feat (is there even that much plastic in the world, if all the oil was used?).
Suffice to say, it wouldn't make any sense to build such a monster, but perhaps Kenner or Hasbro could take random blobs of plastic and market them as "debris" from the Death Star after it was blown up by the Rebels, individually labelled for collecting purposes of course (#1 recovered, #2 recovered, etc.).
Getting to thinking about toys of the other Star Wars ships like the Executor would also be problematic (as tall as the tallest building??), but maybe a regular ISD or Mon Calamari Cruiser could be constructed for play in a large parking lot or football field.
Now a toy Galaxy Class Starship could be done... but it'd still be a pricey toy for rich kids or display at FAO Schwartz. ; )
As a kid I often wanted to have a toy deathstar, but then I didn't really understand the scale of the thing.
Since according to the official literature it's 160 km in diameter, what if I wanted to scale it based on a 6 inch action figure?
6 inch equivalent to 6 foot man (12 in = 1 ft; 1/12)
160 km = 160,000 m = 480,000 ft = 90.90... miles
(1 mile = 5,280 ft)
91 miles / 12 = 7.58.. miles or 13.34 km (!!!!!)
So the toy death star would be almost 8 miles in diameter, 40,000 feet high, making it not only the largest toy ever constructed, but the greatest engineering feat ever accomplished by man, easily dwarfing the tallest buildings. Airplanes would have to fly around it, and climbing it would put a trip to Mt. Everest to shame (requiring oxygen tanks to even attempt to approach the summit). Gathering the materials alone would be a monumental feat (is there even that much plastic in the world, if all the oil was used?).
Suffice to say, it wouldn't make any sense to build such a monster, but perhaps Kenner or Hasbro could take random blobs of plastic and market them as "debris" from the Death Star after it was blown up by the Rebels, individually labelled for collecting purposes of course (#1 recovered, #2 recovered, etc.).
Getting to thinking about toys of the other Star Wars ships like the Executor would also be problematic (as tall as the tallest building??), but maybe a regular ISD or Mon Calamari Cruiser could be constructed for play in a large parking lot or football field.
Now a toy Galaxy Class Starship could be done... but it'd still be a pricey toy for rich kids or display at FAO Schwartz. ; )
